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בֶּן אַרְבָּעִים לַבִּינָה
“A person of 40 is for understanding/binah.”
Pirkei Avot has a famous bit at the end of Chapter 5 which concerns the ages of Jewish humans, right before the /very/ famous bit about turning and turning. It succinctly tells you when to start studying Talmud, when you’ll officially be “old,” what to expect as you age.
To be 40 is to be a word usually translated as “wisdom,” occasionally as “discernment.” I always assumed it was the Hebrew word Chokmah, translated often as just that, “wisdom.” Imagine my surprise when my housemate Fern cracked open the text and found the word Binah, a very different type of knowledge and knowing!
Chokmah is overarching knowledge, the kind of global “wisdom,” getting it without the conscious process. Binah though? She’s all about knowing the difference between things, the ability to pull it apart, the knowledge of what separates one from the other. Binah is all about the consciousness of knowing.
I would have thought 40 was for Chokmah, for knowing so well that you’ve internalized the process, for being so immersed in the fluidity of that 40 years mikveh that it all seems as one. But no. 40 is for knowing the difference; naming the boundaries, leyning where the ley lines are.
I have learned a great deal about where my boundaries are these past few years; what I need and what I can’t/won’t handle.
Pirkei Avot is right. 40 is definitely for discernment.
eish zarah 